September 20, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 102 – Memories

They are funny things, memories, but not necessarily in a ha-ha way. If anyone has ever asked a couple to describe their rememberings from any area or time of their shared life, you will have felt, as I have, that they definitely weren’t there together.

When my own mum recounts something from my childhood, she tells it in a way that assures me I was in another family at the time. I used to think she was right and that I was wrong – ever the swing from either to or – and that this ‘wrong’ in me was because I……..what? Wanted it to be different? possibly. Refused to acknowledge the truth? possibly. Had blanked out reality in favour of fairyland? possibly.

Nowadays I see it differently because I understand that she saw me through her own eyes, as a child inside her life and that wasn’t how I saw it at all. I looked with my own eyes, filtered each experience through my own emotions, needs, hopes and dreams, which were never hers. She has ideas for me that I didn’t like or understand or even want. So, the battle begins early in a life, the battle for a good hold on reality.

And who is to say what Reality is?

Even in a marriage, where two supposed adults, really still children themselves, encounter days and times and moments together, the looking will differ to varying degrees. Where one sees rain, the other sees the light inside a raindrop. One feels he cold, the other doesn’t, so was that house a cold, uncomfortable one or was it a wonderful home, or was it both at the same time? And, in the spinning out of the tale of of it, who will name it?

Then, there are the ears that hear that tale. Are they on one side or on the other according to who or what they personally relate to? If I am angry about something or someone, I will, however ‘good hearted’ I may be, paint them in certain colours, and colours stick, words stick, take root and grow.

It isn’t as simple as the glass half-full, half-empty cliche. Cliches are always too simple, sounding like goodly truths but lacking substance, texture, depth and context. They may help to elevate our thoughts and this is helpful indeed, but no living soul is ever one type of person or another. To get from black to white and back again, we must allow and embrace a thousand shades of grey, and it is inside those greys we mostly live out our days.

So, now, as an old woman (I love being an old woman, choosing, as I do, the picture of old age as a cumulation of experience and wisdom and of letting go) I can hear a story re-spoken and learn, from it’s presentation, more about the person speaking it out than I ever do about the ‘facts’. I even hear my own voice doing the telling and notice where I put the emphasis, what colours I choose, what body language I employ, what tone. And it often smiles me a lot.

On days when I only see the rain, there is a moan and a whine in any telling out. The simple question How are You? can see me grabbing someone’s hand and leading them into a miserable dark wet cavern littered with the old bones of all the women I hoped to become and allowed to die without a voice. On days when I am energetic enough to slip between the raindrops, pausing to catch the warmth of their reflected light, I can swirl us both into the sky along with the fairies and the angels and actually feel critical of their need to tell me about the bunions on their big toes.

Same circumstances. Exactly the same circumstances. The days are the same, the tasks the same, the view the same, and yet everything is different.

So, although we are all within the parameters of this day Friday September 20th, and even if we spend a part of it together, we will tell very stories about it’s 24 hour span.

Which of us is ‘right’ I wonder?

June 25, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 71 – Letting Go

Yesterday I took some washing up to the line like a good island wife, in a stout breeze.

That is not an article of island clothing, by the way, but, instead, a good wind for drying things.

As I climbed up the little mosaic-ed garden steps, a bush erupted beside me. I knew from the sound effects that this was a Blackbird Hoo-ha, at which Blackbirds are pretty good. They can make one out of nothing with their alarm calls, causing an island wife to drop her laundry basket, tipping her husband’s undergarments into a flowerbed and requiring her to wash them all over again.

I stood still, my back against the wall, my husband’s undergarments safely within the confines of the basket, and waited for the drama to unfold. For a few seconds, I and the blackbird family listened for each other, neither of us daring to make a sound. I knew they would give in first, through their natural curiosity and also because time is of the essence for them. Not so for me. I could linger here all morning without a shred of embarrassment or guilt, but, then, I don’t have to learn to fly in order to keep a hold of my life.

Or do I?

Anyway, the male jumped out of the bush first, which is quite proper for a Father Protector, and he locked eyeballs with me and said something rather sharp and double syllabled. I looked away, knowing that this removed me as a confrontational threat, and waited some more. He chirruped at the bush and out bounced three youngsters – all bigger than their dad, followed by a rather ruffled mother

After a few aviation tips, he told them to get on with it, and led the way, landing on the apex of the roof. Eventually they followed, but not without giving dad a whole load of lip about this flying thing and his overly high expectations of them.

This morning I noticed them all around the compost bin, which has overflowed with an excitement of worms, thus providing the family with three good meals a day plus healthy snacks. How wonderful it is, I thought to myself, that this adult pair are likely to have pitched their nest around this very spot precisely because of the overflowing compost bin and the excitement of worms. I wonder if we are clever with our own nest pitching – considering what is best for the family, and, then, moving if we find a danger too close at hand. I doubt it somehow, not with all that mortgage angst and debts and work commitments, although none of that makes it right to be living in the wrong place.

At my little grand-daughter’s naming ceremony, the words for her, in poetry, promises and songs, offered gifts and wisdom and freedom. She must learn from her parents, her guides and then be free to take that learning and shape it her own way. We all want this and yet few of us get it or give it, not really. Through our own fear, we try to keep hold, of our children, our friends. How many of us ever listen to someone, anyone, announce their new plan, a completely bonkers and impossible one, in our opinion and make no comment whatsoever? No word of caution, no opinion, saying something like this:-

Wow! That sounds incredible? How will you achieve that do you think?

And then listen and learn and encourage and only ever give opinion if asked.

Bet you can’t do it. We are all jailors of someone in order to feel free.

May 18, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 58 – Through a Glass

You know you’ve got it right when you leave someone feeling better than they did before you came. I hope I can do that for another but I know for sure someone can do it for me, and not by trying to. It’s all about your heart being right. I have spent some time observing and reflecting on this and know for certain that if a person is the same on the inside as they are on the outside, then there is no fog of confusion around them. Let’s bring this into focus…. If I wake in a frightful grump and want to bash anyone who gets up my nose, then let me be honest about it. Let me not answer, when I hear the nervous question from a shadowy corner of the terrified room, ‘FINE!’ to their ‘What’s wrong?’ thus creating a gale force wind in a confined space and sending everyone to the Fire Exit doors on winged feet. Everyone loses this way. I who breathed fire am now extinguishing the blaze with copious salty tears and they are outside in the fresh air wondering what needs doing in the garden for the rest of the day, and still none of us knows what’s wrong. If I had the courage to admit my failing, which is how I really see it, and to pre-empt the ‘what’s wrong’ question (one I deeply hate) by stepping up and telling it out, I would probably have been off on a lunch date by now. Instead, I can hardly move in the kitchen for elephants and you, who were blasted forcibly outside, are now whistling tunelessly in a most irritating manner, one which will eventually make the whole thing your fault entirely. When someone comes to stay or just to play, they bring good intentions, as a rule, but they also wear their own lives about them, their own troubles and concerns, and if they have never learned to address them in private, to shake hands with each one and listen to what it has to say, these troubles and insecurities will spill out from the darkness and into the room at the most inconvenient times. If a couple visit and he doesn’t like the way she corrects him, and this happens, her anger will rise and surprise us all. Now she appears domineering and rude and he is upset and nobody wants to hear the end of the story which by now is quite forgotten. The root of this lies in childhood, as it always does, and she thinks she has grown up and left childish things in the way back when. If, however, she took the steps to walk back in time, to find and recognise, admit to and release the way she felt when she was publicly ‘corrected’ (thus inferring she was a silly twit) it would never ever rise again. We are human and deliciously so. We are awkward and clumsy in our loving, but life is not something that happens to us. We happen to Life and therein we have considerable levels of control. We know who we want to be, to whom we aspire. We are all basically good people, kind generous-hearted people, but we are much mistaken if we think we can float through and be accepted warts and all. If raising children requires the employment of intelligent energy and dynamic thinking, and if our jobs require the same to a different degree, do we not realise that our own self demands no less? The wonderful thing about the inside and the outside of each one of us, is that when there is a mis-match, everyone can see it. Whatever we might say, it’s who we are that speaks louder and with greater clarity. If we have done the inner work, really paid attention to our own face in the mirror instead of hardly bothering to look and expecting others to allow it, we won’t have to think about what to say next. ‘Whatever is in your heart – that is what will spill over.’ In my childhood, there was a woman who made out she was something she was not. She made my mother feel frumpy and old-fashioned which could not have been further from the truth. Don’t mind her, my granny said. She’s all fur coat and no knickers.’

May 3, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 54 – All Roads Lead

I had arrived as a surprise. My daughter met me in the hallway and we hugged and exchanged greetings. A little voice from deep inside the house asked ‘Where is Granny talking from Mummy?’ and we both laughed, as did the little girl once she found me.

I could have been using skype as my road, or the house phone on loudspeaker. Her last thought was that she would round the corner and find me standing there.

But there are many roads we cannot see, such as a span of years or a scene from the past. We can only find a shape to those inside our imaginations, and no two imaginations will find the same route, although the destination is the same.

Driving Miss Daisy the other day, through the wintry island wasteland, I pointed out a wonderful stone formation, obviously man-built as support for the rise of a narrow track, that wound its way down towards the Atlantic shoreline. There was not a drop of mortar holding it together, but only the skill of the dry stone builder.

We considered the time when this track would have carried man and his animals, and nothing weightier than a pony and cart loaded with hay or feed for the hungry animals. We could hear in our imaginations, the slow march of a day long gone by, the lowing of the cattle, the call of a ewe to her lambs, the odd shout or whistle of the shepherd, and the bark of his dogs. For a moment we could count the day in hours, smell the changing seasons, according to the rise and fall of the sun, or the flow and ebb of the moon tides.

But our pictures would have been very different.

Sometimes in the clipping season, or when the ewes are brought in for dosing, the hill road from the little town grinds to a halt. The local shepherdess is gathering her flock and calling for them to follow her, through the open window of her truck. Those of us forming an ever-growing snake are required to dig for patience as we lurch and stall in the wake of a hundred woolly legs. There is no opportunity to overtake, and no possibility of speeding up.

Some of us click our tongues and roll our eyes impatiently. Some of us smile, knowing we have arrived in an afternoon where time is not the issue, and to hurry along would be to risk lambs becoming separated from their mothers. And we can notice, at this slow pace, the first buds on the heather, the marsh harrier overhead, the way the clouds change and reform into new shapes above the gentle roll of the hills. We can catch the soft calls to ‘follow!’ as they float back to us on a breeze.

And we will all arrive at our destination.

In the end

May 1, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 53 – The Colour of Children

In the night I listen to the wind rising up like an angry woman. By 3 am she has bullied the curtains into a right state. The snapping of upset floral chintz wakes me with a start.

Gunshot, I tell myself as I burst up from another of my apocalyptic dreams. I had just been wandering across a dead grey wasteland, somewhere beyond Thunderdome, and looking for my children. I can’t go back to sleep to find them once I’ve left the dream.

The curtains lift out into the room exposing the window glass, but no light falls in, for this night is just plain black. The only light, if I can name it such, sneaks up the stairs from its source- that disco ball of a mouse.

You would think, wouldn’t you, that shutting down my laptop would shut the rodent down too? But nothing will persuade it into sleep and on it glows, red and blue, all night long, but irritating me a little less tonight, as it lights my way down the stairs and all the way to the kettle.

During the day we had visited a little school over the hill. The sun was warm and yellow (well, maybe not warm) and the sky ice blue with scuds of snowy clouds as we climbed our way up, over and down the hill. The little isles were still where we remembered them to be, but faded a little inside a veil of mist. Ewes with their bright white lambs, peppered the roadside and, behind a wonky fence, slow cows peered at us through long russet fringes.

Neither the island husband nor I had remembered to make packed lunch.

We spent an hour in the light bright classroom on little plastic chairs, discussing her plans to decorate a school shed with beach gatherings; bits of fishing net, bits of rope, colourful plastic, shells and so on. The children do many beach cleans during the summer and after a big tide, pickings are treasure for those who care to think so. Ideas flew like swallows around that little classroom and we could just see how wonderful it would be, once we got beyond talking about it, of course.

The children came back from some outside adventure just as we were leaving, all breathless and excited, their cheeks rosy and their mouths full of chatter. We watched them settle in their places around the wide tables. The teacher introduced us, and explained the hut project, the abstract design ideas, the use of shape and texture and lots of colour. I wondered if those little heads could imagine what we had imagined.

I burped ten times. said one little girl a propos of nothing.

Green burps, she continued, then furrowed her brow.

No, not green………what’s that big colour Mrs Eden?

The big colour? We were all wondering.

Big as your dad? asked a little tousle-headed boy.

No, silly, she replied. Nothing’s big as that.

As we drove back along the little winding road, sucking toffees to quiet our growling stomachs, we considered big colours a bit smaller than a dad, and we felt the awe of it.

April 18, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 49 – Flight

Sometimes a story unwraps like a ribbon. The words just tumble out in the right order and, better still, reflect what I want them to reflect. But not today it seems.

I blame last night and that whistling wind and the clack of the plastic air vents and the scritch- scratch of Virginia creeper, not yet softened with leaves, sounding like the bony fingers of a witch against the window glass. Today is a big day.

It’s launch day for Island Wife, my book published by Two Roads. Actually, to be correct it is Launch Number Two. We already held one on the island, for the folk who see me often and I them for over 35 years now.

The people, who will come this evening to Jarrold’s Book Department in Norwich, will wear faces I haven’t set eyes on for 3 decades.

I guess, like me, they will look older, a bit worn, a bit broken too, but we will know each other in a heartbeat. Faces, hair colour, shapes may have altered dramatically or barely at all, but voices stay the same. I could close my eyes all evening and still know exactly who speaks, even if I have to dig deep into my memory bank.

So many voices and no two the same. There won’t be time to hear the stories, the tales of joy and sadness, the lost and the found in that short 90 minutes, but when it is done and books are signed and drinks are drained, I will walk out with those voices darting around inside my head like swallows just back from Africa. And they?

Well, they will drive or walk or catch a train back into their own lives with a new book in their hands. I may never know their stories, but from tonight, they will all know mine, perhaps hearing my voice for the very first time.

April 5, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 42 – A Tale to Tell

By now, my book is out there in the world and you may even be reading it. You may be loving it, you may not, and over this bit, I have absolutely no control. It is how it is. My responsibility ended as I caught the words from the air around me and laid them down upon a blank sheet of A4. The thoughts and feelings that will arise in you as a result of reading those words, in the order I chose, will relate to your life, not mine, and, in that moment of connection, become something new.

Over the years I have found such connections myself as I devoured the stories of many folk in many places and times. Sometimes I have been tearful for the writer, the hero, or for myself as I become lost in a life that connects deeply with my own. Sometimes thrilling with delight at the way a story bubbles and chatters over the stones like a clear fall of mountain water after new rain. In a well written tale, I can hear the voices and see the landscape. I can smell the wind and taste the grit of it in my mouth; I can feel the warm skin of a dancing child and shiver at the ice cold of a closed mind or a bitter Arctic night. I can twist and turn in the sweaty damp of an unfriendly sleeping bag and I can pull quickly back into the shadows to hide as a cruel drama unfolds before me. I can waken in the night to remember, and then wish I could forget. In short, I become part of the story, and yet play no part at all. I may follow this person, or that. I may long to go back, to see what happened to the child, or the old woman, even knowing that I may not; not until the writer catches the words and lays them down for me on the page. Sometimes I even forget to breathe, so lost am I in the story.

And every one is real.

Although it may be a work of fiction, you can bet that the writer is in there somewhere, for, if not, the tale would be as dull as a Monday shopping list.

But it is not just in books that I can connect with another life. I can find stories in faces along the island roads and they can touch me just as deeply. Of course, we don’t often get to this level on a daily basis – merely exchanging husband news or word of new additions to the family, new accomplishments, new sofas, new guests and so on, but the eyes are the windows to the soul and no mistake. Some bright chirpy person can tell me one thing with their mouth and quite another through their eyes. I do it myself, did it for years.

You are always so bright! They told me, and because it was the done thing, I kept doing it.

Just like you do, or most of you. There are some that might consider leaving their list of ailments and complaints at home, for we all have them to some degree or other and I have found from experience that those with most to complain about, usually don’t. And when I meet those people, who have made a decision not to bore the bejabers out of the rest of us, telling us things we can do nothing whatsoever about and causing rain to fall on that precious moment of shared sunshine, I find my supplies of compassion and respect, verging on reverence, threaten to overwhelm me altogether. My whole day changes as I guess my way into their life and out again feeling humbled. Suddenly my load lightens, supposing I thought I had one in the first place.

There is always an argument between reality and fairyland. I have always preferred fairyland, finding reality way too matter-of-fact for me, and, as we know, these Matters of Fact change daily according to the latest discovery/statistic/breaking news. Shifting sands I reckon, whereas fairyland is always fairyland and you can depend on it remaining so forever, for in that world (the real world in my opinion) we are allowed to be individual in our response to that which we observe. All views are acceptable. Nobody is right and nobody is wrong, for we all see things in different ways according to our creed, birthright,childhood and experiences. And we should stand tall and proud inside our own story, and sing it out, for it is the only one we can really tell.

March 14, 2013 by judyfairbairns

A Point in Time

Last night I watched something on one of those TV channels that loves adverts – or, rather, the revenue they bring in. I hate them. Not only do I not want a deep pile shag wool carpet with drip-resistant fibres and enough depth for the dog to get mislaid in overnight, or a 6-seater sofa in ivory tweed for the six members of the family who can’t wait to sit very close together and in a dead straight line of an evening, but it’s the interruption that bugs me most. There I am, trying to work out who committed the crime, or wallowing in the poignancy of a tragic drama, allowing myself to float away on a cloud of wonderful acting and exquisite prose, when my thoughts are interrupted mid-reverie by squeals of over-excitement about some new and luminous cereal that the whole family will adore including the dog – especially the dog, after a confusing night in the shag pile.

It got me thinking about what really matters in life, and not one of them can be purchased with a credit card. Time, for example. Time for looking. Time for loving. Time to give away, to share.

Although time is the one thing that all of us crave and all of us lack to some degree, it is the last thing we seem to treasure. We say we are running out of it. We say we haven’t any to spare, and yet, time is constant, dependable, a never-ending supply day after day, year after year, and we all have the same amount to spend, regardless of our situation.

I think we need reminding sometimes, of the important and lasting valuables of life, ones no online site or department store will ever sell. In particular, a reminder about our family members need for our time, because from time freely given comes involvement, sharing, comradeship, bridge-building and, above all, the ability to see what makes someone happy, what makes someone sad. It trounces loneliness. It requires no particular skills, no clever techniques. It is just sitting with another or walking alongside them and asking gentle questions, talking together about things you can’t buy, and sharing, listening and smiling. It is about being there and being there again and again, stepping into their world, be they 5, 15, 50, or 150. It’s about saying no to ourself and our own busy schedule and throwing it into the air, asking the question ‘What is important here?’ and finding to our own surprise, that it isn’t what we thought it was. Lunch can wait, the TV news can be missed today. Someone needs us, and not tomorrow at ten, but right this minute.

We all want time with the ones we love and if it means we don’t get an expensive gift, or a new carpet/sofa/gadget, we honestly, honestly won’t mind. In fact, we will find we didn’t really want them at all. What we wanted is what we have; a loved one who wants to be at our side; one who cares deeply enough to turn from their own world and to step into ours; who feels our joy and our sadness; who never lets us down. Relationships can be saved this way. All of them.

January 29, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 21 – To Travel Hopefully

As the outside shoots past my grubby window, I take in my fellow travellers. I know where I’m going, of course, and they are going somewhere too, somewhere that requires them to pack a sandwich and a bottle of mineral water, pick up their book or kindle, their music machine and their mobile phone, just as I did first thing this morning.

I unpack my picnic and sigh quietly (I am in the quiet coach) at the squash of bread and lettuce and crumbly cheese, all gloopy now with the mayonnaise smearing up the window of my cleverly designed sandwich bag with a seal-again top, which I can never seal again, by the way. You have to match the tram lines or it just won’t seal and it always ‘just won’t seal’ under my fingers. I could put my specs on, but decide, instead, as I am too hungry, that I won’t bother. I’ll just post it into my mouth in fingerfuls and chew it…..quietly.

The woman across the way from me is texting. She has been texting for 40 minutes now and her buttons must be quite worn out. Her keypad pings with each letter and she obviously can’t spell because, every so often, I hear her puffs of exasperation escape into the warm air of Coach B. The man behind me has a dry cough, and I feel the punch of each one hit my shoulder as if he is firing peppercorns between the seats. I shift a little, although I don’t want him to think me rude.

And then there are the whispering people, who hardly move for fear of breaking the rule of silence.

Where are they going? I begin to wonder. Are they going to or from? Is one of them running away, or running towards something or someone, and is there hope in their hearts or the foetid drudge puddle of exhausted defeat?

Do they love and are they loved? Do they sing or write or make the best parsnip soup in the village? Do they have regrets?

I like to answer some of my questions myself, for I could never speak them out into the polite air of the quiet coach. I pretend the man with the cough has finally walked out on his over-bearing wife, having told her the thing or two he’s been wanting to tell her for years. That’s why he has a cough now. His vocal chords are astonished.

I continue this reverie, developing it to such a degree of joy and happiness on his behalf, that it’s all I can do not to swing round and congratulate him. Instead, when its my turn to leave, I flash him my widest smile and alight, minding the gap.

January 26, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 19 – On Character and Wheedling.

They say that we are born with our own personality and that we grow our character. I am watching ‘character’ appear daily in a little baby. Each little ‘quirk’ lands on me like a feather, the tickling kind, and I laugh out loud. Even at this early stage of life, it seems, a human creature has something personal to say in response to the world, to us who care for her, and her statements lift into the air and become a new piece in the puzzle. Not that we are puzzled, but more, captivated and enchanted at the way this child is sinking her flag into the land, claiming her stake in it, singing her own song.

I know that the world will affect her growth, that stuff will block her chosen flight, or hem her in and limit her choices, but that is an old chestnut in my opinion, for we can all fly if we just open our wings, whatever life we land in.

As my five kids appeared and began to show their colours, I wondered, not a little, how much colour any mother could take on. It sometimes seemed as though the whole house was like a wild abstract multi media canvas and I needed shades to look at it. How, I asked myself, as nobody else was listening, can there be five completely different characters born from me and their father, when we are just us with limits and baggage and issues and no time to talk about any of them?

I never got an answer, but I can tell you, that life was both hilarious and scary at one and the same time.

The way to work with such an abundance of personalities was in the collective, or so I thought. We called them ‘the children’ and stuffed them into the Landrover along with the dogs and sometimes, a pet lamb or two. When the older ones (by a short leg) made their claim on later bedtimes, or specific opportunities, denied the ‘little boys’ it seemed like a very big deal, not least in the required explanation and subsequent justification of this new treat. Stretching the day a little, a later bedtime, a larger portion of supper, an excuse from washing dishes because of Important Homework (as opposed to reading 3 more pages of Enid Blyton out loud with particular attention to commas and full stops) required a brain shift, well-toned arms and one of those calm strong voices that always sounded like a sqwalk from my mouth. I remember having to stand on a chair as they lurched uncomfortably into the teenage years, just to look like I was taller and therefore, in charge. But I never felt ‘in charge’, not really, and often, when I looked back, after an encouraging wheedle or two, the only living things following me were the faithful collies, the pet lambs and Isabel the hen, not one of which had the slightest clue what I was wheedling about.

Now I look at my five rebels and see fine young adults, with buckets of humour, common sense and character. So maybe they were following after all.